Formerly, measurement results, such as a relative distance and a relative speed between one's own vehicle and a reflected object, a direction, and reflection intensity, which are measured by a vehicle-mounted radar device, are utilized for a vehicle-mounted application for improving vehicle's safeness and amenity. The vehicle-mounted application is, for example, a collision damage mitigation braking system that reduces damage at the time when one's own vehicle collides with an anterior obstacle and an adaptive cruise control system that follows an anterior vehicle.
In the application such as this, a determination is made as to whether or not one's own vehicle should be braked on the basis of the measurement results per se related to an object to be targeted or a new feature quantity derived from the measurement results.
For example, in Patent Document 1, a target's height from the road surface is estimated from the power distribution of the target (a generation pattern of a null point due to multipath propagation) and a determination is made as to whether or not the target is a subject in which one's own vehicle should be braked.
Furthermore, in Patent Document 2, the height of an object is estimated by checking an amplitude pattern dictionary (database) preliminarily created by the use of various sorts of objects whose heights are known.
As a different example, in Patent Document 3, identification is performed as to whether or not a subject is a vehicle or a person to determine as to whether or not the subject is a braking subject on the basis of received power (radar cross section) and a variation (standard deviation) of the difference between received power in an ascending section and a descending section of frequencies in a frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) system.